Armstrong still strong

The lean, fit man sits contritely and answers the questions put to him by a poised, buxom woman. We perceive that the man is contrite because of the slackness of his jaw and the limpness of his shoulders as he responds to the woman’s every penetrating query with halting words of self-effacement.

But the man is not contrite, and the slackness is an assumed slackness and the limpness is a forced limpness and the self-effacement is the last resort of a cornered predator.

The poised, buxom woman is professional empathizer-with-troubled-celebrities Oprah Winfrey, and the lean, fit man is seven-time Tour de France winner Lance
Armstrong. And the stony, aggressive resolve emanating from Armstrong’s icy blue eyes and chiseled, hawkish profile reveals that he is very sorry.

But not sorry for his use of steroids, cortisone, blood-doping agents and other performance-enhancing drugs during his record-setting championship streak, nor for his development of a stable of chemically fueled supercyclists, nor for his shrill, vehement bullying of all those who leveled accusations of cheating and fraud against him.

Just very sorry that he got caught in a lie.

And what a lie! A web of lies of surprisingly large proportion. The Cascade Range of lies. The Mississippi River of lies. A massive, multiplayer online game order of a lie. A shirtless, bearded, hairy-chested, bear-wrestling, Yukon gold prospector of a lie. And really, quite a delicious lie for the jaded and cynical among us to relish after the entree course’s dirty plates have been sent back to the kitchen: a raspberry-
balsamic-reduction-spritzed slice of New York cheesecake of a lie, with a sprig of mint
on top.

A perfectly American kind of lie.

I for one applaud Lance Armstrong for his forthright and uncompromising pursuit of falsehood and self-realization in the face of ego-smashing, impoverished reality. The truest American of his generation, Armstrong hasn’t allowed the physical limitations imposed on the human subject by nature to capsize his ruthless pursuit of his platonic ideal of self. Neither have the false and historically situated social strictures of “honesty” or “right conduct” or “not sticking a switchblade in your friends’ guts” tamped down his admirable drive to stand head-and-shoulders above the mass of human mediocrity.

For this reason and others, I humbly propose that Lance Armstrong replace the bald eagle as our national animal.

Man, as stated in an addendum to a classic political tract by Aristotle that was lost to history before being discovered recently in the soil beneath a McDonald’s restaurant construction site in Turkey, is best defined as the “lying animal.” The American man is nothing but the loftiest, handsomest and most hygienic version of this animal.

For what, truly, is America if not a tight network of interlocking lies and conscious self-deception?

As Americans, we cherish and defend with unbending constancy the lies of universal human equality, majoritarian democracy and the separation of powers; the lies of the cultural melting pot, multicultural syncretism and the vast, vistaed void of the West; and the lies of the possibility—nay, the desirability!—of material prosperity and fulfillment in this life, of a ranch house with a three-car garage, a swimming pool, two-and-a-half children and an Airedale terrier, and a DirectTV satellite receiver mounted precariously with plastic twist ties and C-clamps on the wooden railing of a stained-cedar prefab back porch.

The lie of the inexorable rewards of hard work and honesty.

Through his steadfast commitment to the power of the lie, Lance Armstrong has proven to be a positive example to the couch-locked youth of the Xbox generation.

To compete competitively in the future world of Chinese and Indian ascent, the future leaders and citizens of our nation need to embrace the necessity of cheating, lying, stealing and browbeating every last opponent on the world stage. Employing thus this cocktail of deceit and bad manners—and a certain chemical leg up—may America pedal its taut-muscled calves behind Armstrong as together they glide back down the black-topped boulevard of global economic and political preeminence.

And may Lance Armstrong appear opposite George Washington on the American quarter-dollar coin.